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From: lambert@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Etymology of garden and town
Message-ID: <6785@boring.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Feb-86 19:48:24 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6785
Posted: Wed Feb 19 19:48:24 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Feb-86 07:13:22 EST
References: <889@kuling.UUCP> <146@crin.UUCP>
Reply-To: lambert@boring.UUCP (Lambert Meertens)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 23
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax

>- other words have specifically scandinavian origins: "husband", "town",
>  "garden" ...

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, garden comes from
Old Northern French gardin, a variant of jardin, which might come from a
hypothetical Romanic form *gardino derived from a hypothetical
(reconstructed) Common Germanic word *gardaz, *gardon, whence also
Scandinavian gard, Dutch gaarde, German Garten and English yard.  It is
cognate to Russian gorod and -grad in Petrograd.  Dutch gaarde is somewhat
obsolete, surviving in poetry and in the words gaardenier (gardener),
boomgaard (orchard < ort-geard) and wijngaard (vinyard).
According to the same source, town comes from Common Germanic (except
Gothic) *tunaz, *tunam, whence also Norse tun, Dutch tuin and German Zaun.
A cognate Celtic dun- survives in some town names: Autun, Leyden.
The original meaning was the same as garden: enclosed land.  Note that
Dutch tuin still has this meaning: the normal translation of garden is
tuin.  German Zaun now means the fence or hedge enclosing the garden.

-- 

     Lambert Meertens
     ...!{seismo,okstate,garfield,decvax,philabs}!lambert@mcvax.UUCP
     CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), Amsterdam